“So you will live out all the rest of your years as Tom Badgerlock.”
“It seems likely to me.” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice and failed.
“Do you feel that?” Web asked me suddenly.
“I feel it's the wisest thing to do, if not the easiest,” I replied reluctantly.
“No, no. Open your Wit, man. Do you feel something, something more immense than you've ever felt before?”
I halted and stood silent. The Wit is like any other sense. One becomes so accustomed to the sounds of the day or the smells of the cook fires that one ceases to pay full attention to them. Now I stood still, as if listening, but actually unfolding my awareness of the life-net around me. There was Web, warm and hearty and near. Farther up the trail, I sensed the others, a confused string of beings emanating various degrees of fatigue and discomfort. My sensation of those who were Witted was slightly sharper and clearer than for the ordinary folk of the party. I could not feel Web's bird; I suspected she was out over the water, feeding. “Only the ordinary—” I began to say, and then stopped. Had I felt something? A very large, subtle swelling of the Wit? It was as if a door had opened briefly and then closed again. I grew more still, and closed my eyes. No. “Nothing,” I commented, opening them again.
He had been watching my face. “You felt it,” he told me. “And I feel it still. Next time you sense it, hook on to it.”
“Hook on to it?”
He shook his head regretfully. “Never mind. That is one of those things that ‘one day' you'll have time to learn from me.”
It was the closest he had come to a rebuke, and I was surprised by how much it stung. I knew I deserved it. I found the strength to be humble and asked, “Do you think you could explain it to me as we walk?”
He turned his head and lifted his eyebrows in gentle mock surprise. “Why, yes, Fitz. I could do that, now that you ask me to. Choose someone in the party ahead of us, someone unWitted, and I'll try to explain to you how it is done. Some Old Bloods theorize that it is how pack hunters settle on one animal in a herd and mark it out as their prey. Perhaps you've seen young wolves or other predators that fail to make that first step in hunting. Instead of selecting a single animal to hunt, they charge the entire herd or flock, and all prey evades them. That is, of course, one of the strengths of a herd. Prey animals cloak their individuality from the hunters, and hide in plain sight of them.”
And so, very belatedly, began my lessons with Web. By the time we had caught up with the others, I had been able to single out Chade and be aware of him, even at the moments when he was not in my line of sight. I had also felt, twice more, that immense heave of presence in my Wit-sense. But unlike Web, I had felt such a sensation before. I kept that piece of knowledge to myself, though it made my heart sink to do so. I knew a dragon when I felt one. I expected the wide shadow of wings to sweep over me, for I knew of no other way to explain how I could sense so large a creature, and then feel no trace of it. But the skies above me remained blue, clear and empty.
When we reached the others, they were standing in the scant shelter of an outcropping of rock. Outislander runes were cut into the surface of it in a wavering line that wandered back beneath the ice level. The Hetgurd witnesses stood near the rock, and their displeasure at being here was writ large on their faces. Yet most of them looked sourly amused, too. I wondered why. One of their men was on his knees, doggedly digging at the ice that had pushed up against the rock. His tool was his belt knife, and he clashed the iron blade against the stubborn ice as if he were stabbing someone. He'd make a dozen strokes and then brush away a negligible amount of chipped ice. It seemed a futile task, but he was intent on it.
Longwick's men had brought their tools up with them. They carried shovels and picks and pry bars, but as yet they had not put any of them to work. They stood at the ready, bored and uninterested as any good soldiers usually are, and waited to be assigned their task. I did not wonder long why they had not yet begun. As we approached, Chade and Dutiful were face-to-face with the Narcheska and Peottre. The other members of the Wit coterie stood idly nearby. Thick had sat down in the snow behind them and was humming aloud to himself, nodding his head in a rhythmic counterpoint.
“Yes, but where?” Chade demanded, and from his tone, I knew it was not the first time he had asked his question.
“Here,” Peottre replied patiently. “Here.” He swept one arm wide, indicating the small plateau we stood on. “As the runes on the rock say, ‘Here sleeps the dragon Icefyre.' I have brought you to him, as we agreed we would do, and the Narcheska has accompanied us to witness your task. Now, it is up to you. You are the ones who must unearth him and take his head. Is not that the task the Prince agreed to, within his own mothershouse?”
